


Every Color Glows When You Do

by Lokei



Series: Cambridge Colors [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-28
Updated: 2010-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-18 20:34:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokei/pseuds/Lokei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack's taking Daniel up on his invitation.  Assuming they can get past the talking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Color Glows When You Do

**Author's Note:**

> Very little in this story qualifies as plot. Just so you’re duly warned.

Jack checked his watch for the umpteenth time as he headed up Kirkland Street. It was two minutes later than the last time, which meant he was still safely past Detective Jackson’s stated end-of-shift. More than an hour past, in fact. Jack had never been the sort of boss who vanished at last call and left the underlings to deal with closing, so that had taken a while—and then he’d had an overwhelming need to go home and wash the bar grit off before going to meet Daniel. He’d ditched the bartender’s uniform – black tee, black dress shirt, gray pants—for a more comfy pair of jeans and a nice brown and gray vertical striped oxford that he was just vain enough to know suited his eyes and, sadly, increasingly his hair.

102, 106, 110, there it was. Jack bounded up the entry steps and pressed the button. No more time for second thoughts. There wasn’t any buzzer or clicking of the door though, and Jack raised his eyebrows. Was the detective not back from the station? Was he asleep? Had he changed his mind?

Jack was just raising his hand to try the bell one more time when he picked up the sound of rapid feet on the stairs, and then the heavy wooden door in front of him popped open to reveal an anxious-looking Daniel Jackson.

“Oh good, you’re still here,” Jackson’s face broke into a welcoming grin, relieving Jack’s fledgling reservations enough for the impact of Daniel’s slightly damp gray tee shirt and worn blue jeans to hit Jack with a double tap to the heart and to the hormones. Jackson was babbling something about the buzzer being broken, and his somewhat nervous tumbling chatter and relaxed attire presented such a different picture from the suave, confident detective in the bar—more vulnerable and yet just as attractive, even with the darkening bruise on one cheek.

“So, can I come in?” Jack raised his eyebrows a bit and Jackson broke off his explanation that he’d been afraid Jack would arrive while he was still in the shower—and wasn’t that a thought—to grin sheepishly and open the door wide enough to wave Jack inside and up the stairs ahead of him.

“All the way up,” Daniel called from behind him, a laugh in his voice. “Shouldn’t be a problem for an ex-military man, right?”

“Been a while since I needed to make flight weight,” Jack grumbled, but he jogged obligingly up the staircase, knowing that Jackson was 90% likely to be watching his ass.

“Doesn’t look like it from here,” Jackson observed.

Jack grinned. Make that 100% likely.

“In fact,” Jackson’s voice floated over Jack’s shoulder, “your records show that while you were still in the Air Force you maintained field readiness at every physical even though you’d been benched for over a year.”

“Desk jobs are not forever,” Jack said lightly. He didn’t want to talk about it. Needed a change of subject, fast. “What about you, Detective? Not into the stereotypical doughnuts?”

“Daniel,” the detective replied, “and I’ve been known to down the occasional Dunkin’s, but stereotypes aren’t really my thing. You may have noticed. This is my landing.”

“Seeing as there aren’t any more stairs, I’m glad to hear it,” Jack gestured to the ceiling. “We’re both a little old for the Barefoot in October thing. Barefoot in the Park. Whatever that play was.”

“The one with Robert Redford and the neighbor in the attic,” Daniel filled in. “No ladders, I promise.”

They smiled at each other in perfect accord as Daniel opened the door. Jack whistled low as he walked in. Daniel’s apartment was like something out of a movie set, the kind that gets set design awards. One wall of the living room was an artful jumble of prints, photographs, and paintings in mismatched but harmonious frames, and almost every other vertical surface was covered in bookshelves. One cupboard looked like it could be a media cabinet, and the comfy looking blue armchair near it seemed to have gotten a lot of use, by the number of mugs stacked on the table near the lamp.

Through the archway diagonal from the door looked like the kitchen and a hallway, which presumably led to the bedroom and bath. Daniel had crossed the room while Jack was surveying, and was now leaning against the doorway with a faint smile.

“Coffee?” he offered.

Jack raised an eyebrow. “Do I look like I’m going to be needing help staying awake?”

Daniel’s gaze raked Jack up and down and Daniel smirked. “Not particularly, no.” The detective pushed himself off the wall and beckoned.

“C’mere.”

Jack considered making some kind of protest about not needing to follow orders anymore, but he and Daniel didn’t actually know each other all that well, and he wasn’t sure it’d be taken for the humor it was, and not some weird dominance issue. A policeman and an ex-SpecOps colonel did not an easy, laid-back pairing make.

Daniel’s hand was still out. Jack went.

Daniel’s fingers curved around Jack’s waist and then slid to his rear jeans pocket. Jack reciprocated just before Daniel leaned back against the wall again.

“Hey,” Daniel said with a small smile. “What’s a nice bookseller like you doing in a place like this?”

Jack snorted. “Prospecting. You must have half of Widener Library in here.”

“Not quite,” Daniel grinned. “Despite my best efforts. Stunningly, Harvard frowns on widespread larceny from its libraries, so I am forced to buy my own.”

“Hence the prospecting,” Jack chuckled. “I had you pegged for a book buyer the minute you picked up that tome on the Maya. Shouldn’t we be calling you ‘Professor’ instead of ‘Detective?’”

The smile dropped off Daniel’s face. “Almost could have, once,” he said shortly. “Life had other plans.”

Jack leaned back a little to get a better view on the other man’s face. “What happened?”

Daniel closed his eyes and let his head drop back against the wall. “My wife was killed in a drive-by. Gang related.” His voice was hard as he opened his eyes again. “You don’t shoot the social worker. She shouldn’t even have been in the neighborhood that day, it was her day off and her partner called in with a family emergency he couldn’t cover on his own.”

“God,” Jack wouldn’t have kept the appalled tremble out of his voice even if he could have. “That’s just awful, Daniel. I’m so sorry.”

Daniel huffed in acknowledgement. “Her son—my stepson—lives with his father and stepmother now. I see him every once in a while, but neither of us seem to do really well with communicating now that his mom’s gone. Every year it gets harder.”

“That sucks,” Jack said with deep empathy. “So that’s what made you get into police work?”

“More or less,” Daniel shrugged. “Anthropology seemed not…practical enough, not if I were planning to just continue in academia. I still love it, still wish sometimes I were inside those brick and iron gates, not out here walking the perimeter, but somehow—“ He shrugged again, eyes finally coming back to meet Jack’s. “Somehow it seemed like the best way to honor her memory, to try to make the streets safer.”

Jack nodded. “I can respect that.” He jerked his chin towards the door. “I didn’t mean to bring up a heavy topic. If I’ve killed the mood, you can kick me out any time.”

Daniel’s lips twitched ruefully. “I think we’ve just had Exhibit A in why Detective Daniel Jackson doesn’t have much of a social life. Murray’d smack me for bringing up my dead wife on a date.”

“That’s your partner, right?” Jack’s main impressions of Murray were of his stature, glare, and silence. He didn’t seem like the type to josh his partner for lack of social life.

“Yeah. He’s a good egg, and very handy in interrogations.”

“I noticed,” Jack retorted. “He filled my bar with ominous vibes as soon as you two first turned up asking questions, four days ago. It was pretty easy to figure out why you ended up with the undercover part of this gig. He screams ‘cop.’ Or at the very least, ‘enforcer.’ Some drug lord would love to have him on his payroll.”

Daniel snorted. “Actually, he did some undercover work in Vice for a while, busted open a big drug ring doing exactly that.” He dug his hands a little deeper into Jack’s pockets and Jack obligingly shifted his weight back towards the detective, something of the previous mood returning as Daniel’s voice turned flirty. “I take it you don’t think I scream ‘cop?’”

“Not particularly, no,” Jack mimicked Daniel’s response from earlier and then dropped his voice as he lowered his head towards Daniel’s ear. “Though I’m kinda hoping you scream. Shouting, moaning, and creative expletives are also welcome.”

Daniel chuckled and the vibrations went straight down Jack’s spine. “That depends. You believe in equal opportunity screaming?”

Jack contemplated that option for all of about an eightieth of a millisecond. “Hell yeah.”

Daniel chuckled again. “Oh good. Wasn’t sure I was allowed to ask. You being a colonel and all.”

“Retired,” Jack corrected. “Or I wouldn’t have told.”

“Resigned?” Daniel’s eyebrow went up in query. Jack gave a half-nod.

“Brass did badly by a good friend of mine. Real badly. I’d been wanting out for a while, but what happened with Paul, well.” Jack grimaced. “It was the proverbial straw.”

“He was outed?”

“By a bigot with a serious grudge and no actual evidence. Paul was too honorable to deny it when they pulled him up for a hearing. And since it ultimately turned out he was involved with someone in his chain of command—“

“Career ending move, huh?”

“Yeah.” The word was heavy in Jack’s mouth.

Daniel pulled his hand from Jack’s pocket to scrub a knuckle across Jack’s cheekbone, a gesture which recognized and relieved the bitterness at once. “Close friend?”

“Used to be very close.”

“Close call?”

“Too careful for that. Thought I taught Paul to be.”

Daniel shook his head. “Should have taken me up on that coffee.”

Jack rolled his eyes in acknowledgement. “Given all this talking we’ve been doing? Probably. Or maybe I should just have led with this,” and he leaned the rest of his weight into Daniel, pressing in with his hips at the same time that he met Daniel’s remarkable lips. He’d been wanting to get at those lips since he met the detective days ago, and the low burn of attraction that had been simmering since Daniel walked into the bar this evening hadn’t really diminished at all despite the conversational detours. In fact, if Jack were really all that interested in analyzing himself, he’d recognize that knowing something more about Daniel actually made him more interesting and attractive—but at the moment he was far more involved in testing the detective’s skill at tongue tangling.

It would require more empirical evidence, certainly, but the preliminary results were quite gratifying.

Daniel made a sound which had definite resemblance to a growl and pushed off the wall, backing Jack through the archway with somewhat unsteady and irregular progress. They bounced off the wall a few times before finding the bedroom doorway.

“Ow,” Jack muttered into the kiss and Daniel laughed between smaller kisses.

“Call yourself—Special Ops?” The detective manhandled Jack towards the bed.

Jack freed himself long enough to get his hands under Daniel’s shirt. “Maybe I just want you to kiss it better.”

“Well in that case,” Daniel’s breezy tone belied the heat in his eyes. “Where does it hurt, babe?”

Jack got Daniel’s t-shirt off in one swoop and then hooked his arm around the detective’s waist to pull him onto the bed and on top of Jack himself. “All over.”

Daniel returned Jack’s grin with interest and set himself to unbuttoning Jack’s shirt. “Thought I said buttons were optional?”

“I was giving you the option to undo them,” Jack was enjoying the way Daniel’s half-propped-up pose was displaying the other man’s nicely toned chest and arms. “Though I must admit your t-shirt idea had benefits.”

“Hmmm,” Daniel turned his head from side to side as if considering the evidence of his bare shoulders. They were nice shoulders. Jack grinned as Daniel shrugged and brought his mouth to bear on the strip of skin exposed by Jack’s undone buttons. Jack tensed his abs as Daniel’s touch brushed across them and Daniel’s lips curved against Jack’s skin.

“What,” Jack said, somewhat breathlessly as Daniel’s fingers got busy at his waistband and below, pulling Jack’s jeans and boxers off with an appreciative murmur. “My file didn’t say I was ticklish? Air Force is…falling down on the job.”

“Falling down? I prefer going down,” Daniel murmured.

“God,” Jack groaned, though whether at the pun or at the way Daniel suited action to words, he didn’t know or care. Daniel’s lips he already knew were talented, and he was getting some more of that urgently desired empirical evidence regarding Daniel’s tongue as well. Jack lifted a hand to brush Daniel’s face, to try to say something before they hit the land of no return. But Daniel reached up and wove his fingers through Jack’s, and that simple gesture pushed the other man over the edge as surely as runaway horses over a cliff.

When Jack’s brain clicked back on, several gloriously overwhelming minutes later, he hoisted himself reluctantly up on one elbow to eye Daniel, basking with a small smile, head pillowed on Jack’s thigh. Somewhere while Jack was distracted the detective had also managed to get naked, and made quite a pleasant picture to behold. Daniel glanced up under the scrutiny, and when Jack’s gaze locked on to his, the bookselling barkeep completely lost the plot. Again.

“You…” he said, voice softer than he had intended. Daniel smiled like a satisfied cat.

“What’s the matter, cop got your tongue?”

Jack snorted. “You, Daniel Jackson, are ridiculously good at that. You’re also crazy. What if I hadn’t been clean?”

“You’d have stopped me,” Daniel said placidly, kissing the hip near his lips and flabbergasting Jack.

“How the hell do you know that?”

“You said yourself you’re careful. Plus, you’d spoken to me all of twice before you decided to put yourself into the middle of a police investigation to protect me. You wouldn’t do that and then cause me harm.”

“And if my hormones had overpowered my hero complex?”

Daniel raised an eyebrow. “How often does that happen?”

Jack pursed his lips. “Never has,” he admitted. For some reason that felt like an admission of failure, but Daniel just nodded as if he’d already figured out that vigilance and self-control were like the salt and pepper of Jack’s universe.

“Still, you’re right,” Daniel ran his fingers up and down Jack’s thigh. “I should have asked. Feeling like I know you doesn’t mean I do.” When he met Jack’s gaze his eyes were serious. “But I want to.”

“Good.” Jack got a hand on Daniel’s arm and tugged him up so they were closer to eye level, relishing the drag of skin on skin. “What else do you want?”

Daniel’s lips quirked. “Very forthright, aren’t you?”

“Getting to know me better already.”

Daniel kissed him for that, a too-brief brush of lips that had Jack lifting his head off the bed to follow. Daniel obligingly kissed him again, and Jack got lost for a bit in the way their tastes mingled. When the need for air became too pressing, he pulled back into the pillow, and the motion shifted Daniel’s body too.

“Still interested in some of that equal opportunity screaming?” Daniel’s voice started on a gasp and ended on a groan as Jack slid his legs wider underneath the detective’s weight. “I’m guessing that’s a yes.”

“You’re a quick study,” Jack approved.

“Getting to know me better already,” Daniel riposted, rocking into Jack in a way that made the older man’s eyes want to roll up into his head. “Condom?”

“For now.” Jack didn’t do one-night stands. He didn’t go this far on first dates ever, either. Maybe his hormones were getting a little the better of him after all—not so surprising, given that Daniel registered the possibility of ‘later’ with a brilliant, nose-crinkling, eye-brightening smile. Jack’s heart thumped hard and he watched the stretch of Daniel’s muscles hungrily as the other man leaned over to fetch the necessary supplies.

The next half hour or more passed in a blur, the likes of which Jack hadn’t experienced in years, if ever. Moments stood out—Daniel’s fingers running over the back of Jack’s scalp, the way Daniel’s shoulders flexed, the flash of humor in his eyes that traded places back and forth with sharp blue lust.

When they were brought back to the mutual reality of sweaty, messy, tangled limbs, Daniel chuckled into Jack’s shoulder.

“I haven’t had that much fun in years,” the detective said, rolling away to reach for the box of tissues.

“Was just thinking that myself,” Jack admitted, intercepting the box and tossing it off to the side in favor of rolling on top of Daniel instead. “Though I wouldn’t be averse to a rematch.”

“Glad to hear it,” Daniel stretched his arms and linked them in smug satisfaction behind his head. “Though really, I’m mostly relieved to have finally found a reliable bookseller.”

“Cheeky,” Jack admonished, and Daniel grinned.

“So, what’re you going to do about it, Colonel?”

“Right now?” Jack pretended to consider. “Probably fall asleep on you and save exacting my revenge for when you least expect it. Say, after breakfast?”

Daniel brought his arms down and around Jack’s waist. “Works for me.”


End file.
